Science!

We’ve had a very busy couple of weeks since the last update. First, we performed the lift operation to marry the pre-cooled cryostat with her supportive gondola. This made the Spider payload functionally almost complete, except for the sun shields and solar panels. After the lift/marriage we could start filling Lloro with liquid helium so that she could cool our detectors down to the very cold temperatures at which they operate. For the cryo nerds, we also then use a capillary-filled pumped helium-4 bath to get below 2 K and closed-cycle helium-3 adsorption refrigerators to get down to 0.3 K (around -273 C).

Once we had cold detectors, our goal was to do all the science we could with the limited time and liquid helium that we had available, by conducting a battery of different tests on Spider’s six telescopes. We split into two shifts to manage Lloro’s needs at all times of day, and to efficiently get lots of testing done. Detector experts Jeff and Sasha joined us for this time. Though we also lost Sho to exam studying.

Wrestling with the star camera mounts

Before Sho had to leave us

Star camera wires

On the back of Lloro

Lloro's belly wires

Tilting Lloro

To her neutral rest position, in preparation for lifting

Spider shirt!

Original 2013 edition. Also Sasha is here!

Lloro lift rigging

For future referece

More rigging

Remember not to swap the 5 and 6 foot straps with each other.

Holding helium hose

This is the one thing we don't disconnect for the lift

Midair cryostat

Above the gondola

Together

And reconnecting cables

Connecting cables for assembled payload

Testing the liquid helium scale

With about 1000 lbs of people

Then using the scale for liquid helium

With about 1000 lbs of dewar

Starting a liquid helium fill

Installing the fill line's "stinger" into the dewar

Spider from below

Featuring SIP, reaction wheel, and Lloro's belly

Rolling stairs

Are convenient. And very dirty from living outside.

Visitors

I give a little impromptu talk about Spider

Ladders

Need lots of ladders for filling liquid helium with the cryostat on the gondola

Night shift

In their cryogenic PPE

Manifold checks

Arts and crafts!

Johanna loves getting to do arts and crafts instead of sitting in meetings

Detector lesson

Sasha gives an overview of how our flight code for controlling the tuning and readout of detectors works

Sasha teaching

Arts and crafts accomplished

The white coating prevents the pivot from overheating during flight

Connecting optical fibers

For detector readout electronics

Helium plume

From venting the relatively high pressure dewar before filling

Another liquid helium fill

Vy goes for a ride

With Spence driving

Debugging the hard to reach star camera computer

I take a ride too

When the "big guns" are called in for debugging

Detector tuning party

Folks gather to learn from Jeff tuning a set of detectors

Canada Day!

Simon and I made poutine and maple taffy

Testing cables

To try to figure out some electrical weirdness we saw

Big liquid nitrogen dewar

Outside the Bemco. We looked on jealously as our nitrogen was running out

Science

Using a cooled liquid nitrogen source

Simon carries TRPNS

For more science

TRPNS on Lloro

Bolts on the top, in front of one telescope, to then calibrate its polarization angles.

Cat

He's taken up lounging on cars. Especially the Kia

Carbonated coffee

We get some dried ice for calibration work, this leads to culinary experiments (failed, in this case)

Happy Spider shirt Monday

The old timers on this campaign revive a 2013 tradition

Old timers

From the front now

Opened up FTS

Fourier Transform Spectrometer. Another calibration device that mounts in front of the telescopes

Corwin foils the plans of evil stray light

More cat lounging on cars

Bill's back!

And demonstrating the correct technique for randomly waving objects in front of a telescope